I have mentioned that by the
date of Constantine's death - A.D. 337 - the architecture of the old St
Peter's was fairly complete. We do not know how long or closely the emperor
followed the course of the building which he had initiated in a frenzy
of enthusiasm. During the later part of his reign he was kept extremely
busy establishing his authority in the Eastern Empire and raising the
new capital called after him Constantinople. His main interests had undoubtedly
veered from the Tiber to the Bosphorus. Nevertheless, from the precious
gifts which he continued to bestow upon the Apostle Petter - gilded candelabra
ten feet high, silver vessels, chalices encrusted with gems, and a gold
paten with finialled lid, its stem inset with emeralds and amethysts -
we may suppose that he still looked upon the adornment of the great basilica
of the old western capital as a primary duty. St Sylvester, who had been
pope when the emperor began to build, predeceased him by only one year.
Sylvester shared, as may be supposed, Constantine's enthusiasm and just
lived to consecrate St Peter's with much solemnity, granting generous
remission for sins committed to all overseas visitors who came to venerate
the great mother church of the Christian faith.

No contemporary descriptions
in writing, no frescoes nor mosaics survive to give us a full and satisfactory
picture of the basilica as built by the Emperor Constantine round the
shrine of the Apostle to whom it was designed to bring honour. There is,
curiously enough, nothing of consequence in the way of illustrations before
the Renaissance began its long toll of destruction. Of the process off
this destruction and the rebuilding, numerous frescoes, drawings and sketches
bear record. Of the several descriptions given in late medieval times,
hardly one agrees with another. This is not altogether surprising because
in the twelve to thirteen hundred years of its existence the basilica
underwent repeated restoration and alteration. Quite apart from frequent
embellishments of detail, wide-scale renewal was from time to time found
necessary. For instance, little more than a hundred years after the church
was finished, Leo the Great was obliged to repair terrible damage caused
by an earthquake. He had to renew large areas of the ceiling and replace
quite sixteen of the forty columns of the nave. Honorius I (625-38) had
to re-roof the whole building with tiles taken from the Basilica of Maxentius.
This pope was incidentally responsible for adorning the principal entrance
with silver. His pious benefaction tempted the Saracens in 846 to enter
and bring unwonted havoc upon the shrine and tomb. Sergius I (687-701)
in course of restorations came upon a piece of the True Cross hidden in
the sacristy and as a thanksgiving presented splendid vessels of gold
and silver. To Adrian I (772-95) more than to any other medieval pope
the basilica and campanile were indebted for expensive ornament. Gregory
IV (827-44) largely rebuilt the atrium. Gregory VI in 1045 had to appeal
to Christendom for money to avert total collapse of the fabric; the response
was negligible, only one French duke subscribing to the fund. St Leo IX's
first act on his accession in 1049 was to put work of restoration in hand,
money or no money forthcoming from the European princes. Gregory IX (1227-41)
actually had to issue a threat of excommunication against any persons
caught treating the walls of the basilica as a quarry. Nicholas III (1277-80)
resumed work of restoration, as well as presented to the Treasury magnificent
copes of English needlework, then acknowledged to be the finest in the
world. John XXII (1316-34) deprived himself of means of subsistence in
order to launch repairs which his successor Benedict XII continued until
the intervention of the Black Death and the Hundred Years' War. When Urban
V (1362-70), urged by Petrarch, was persuaded to return to Rome from Avignon,
he found St Peter's in decay and abandonment, the cattle grazing off weeds
in the atrium and even wandering up to and nuzzling the altars within
the church. On Martin V's reaching Rome in 1420, conditions were such
that not a soul could be found to light a lamp before the confession,
far less to pay for the oil required. The portico was tumbling into ruins
and the Vatican walls, breached in several places, allowed wolves from
the Campagna to forage at night time for dead bodies in the Campo Santo.
With commendable zeal, Martin rebuilt and repainted the portico, repaired
and largely re-roofed the fabric. No wonder then that the building which
the renaissance popes decided to do away with barely resembled the one
raised by Constantine the Great. The vicissitudes of centuries had altered
its appearance in very many particulars.

As regards plan, it had not
altered substantially. From the western end of the Borgo, where now the
great piazza is, a flight of thirty-five steps led to an ample platform
paved with marble before an irregular huddle of buildings. These did not
form the front of the basilica, but the entrance to a vast court, or atrium,
an early Christian arrangement which may still be seen at the rebuilt
basilica of St Paul outside the Walls. To the left lay the square tower-like
church of St Apollinaris, its base splaying out like a fortress over the
valley; to the right, behind what was to become the balcony reserved for
papal benediction, the campanile. The conspicuous tower was the largest
in Rome. Emile Mâle was satisfied that it had been built by Stephen III,
and given three massive bells, after the coronation of Pepin in 745. It
was square with finials at the four corners, and crowned with a dunce
cap steeple, partly tiled in laminated gold and silver. In 1574 a small
dome was substituted for the steeple. The sixteenth-century drawings are
not in agreement whether all the pairs of gothic openings on each face
of the tower were of tow lights, or some of three. Since the campanile
was struck by lightning and seriously damaged three times during the fourteenth
century alone, the openings probably varied in size and shape as they
were frequently being renewed.

The thirty-five steps to the
atrium were in five flights. They were greatly extended in width by Pope
Symmachus (498-514). At their foot, visitors were pestered by the beggars
who besieged the steps day and night. All the way up on either side, and
even within the entrance to the atrium, were makeshift kiosks and stalls,
mostly kept by Jews who did a thriving trade, selling cheap jewelry, rosaries
and veronicas (handkerchiefs bearing the impression of Christ's head),
figs and salt fish, and acting as quack doctors and dentists. At the top
of the steps emperors and royal potentates were received by the Pope,
and on the level platform Charlemagne, having mounted on his knees, was
raised to his feet and embraced by Adrian I. Here too heretical books
were burnt with much solemnity, those of Photius, the deposed patriarch
of Constantinople, emitting - so it used to be said - a noticeably offensive
odour to the intense gratification of the righteous dignitaries present.

The entrance to the atrium
was by a two-storeyed portico of three arches. These had great bronze
doors which in 1167 were stolen and carried as trophies of war to Viterbo
by the German troops of Frederick Barbarossa. On this terrible occasion,
the emperor stormed the basilica, desecrated the altars with blood, and
left heaps of slain weltering on the nave pavements. Above the portico
doors, mosaics were introduced in the fourteenth century. On the inner
wall of the portico facing the atrium was Giotto's famous mosaic, the
Navicella. It was saved from the renaissance demolitioners and re-set,
in a horribly over-restored condition it is true, within the portico of
the present church. This mosaic depicts the tempestuous scene on the Lake
of Galilee, St Peter, having left the ship to walk across the waves to
Jesus, loses heart. From the sky, allegorical winds are blowing violently
through conches. The huge sail billows. The other disciples on board pray,
or merely wonder, and a man under a dead tree on dry land, which seems
to be a handclasp distance from the tossing vessel, placidly fishes.

The vast atrium, 200 feet
long and 180 feet broad, enclosed a level area from a line where the present
piazza joins the ellipse of the colonnade to the junction of the first
with the second bay of the renaissance nave. As the ground on which the
atrium's eastern half, and indeed that on which its entrance and the platform
as far as the steps stood, is now again sloping, and was then flat, some
idea is given of Constantine's tremendous work of leveling. The atrium
was surrounded on four sides by colonnades, called the quadriporticus,
which were opened about the year 1500 on the north and south sides to
lesser courtyards. The atrium was reserved for the penitents, who were
not allowed admission to the church. Originally laid out as a garden decked
with flowers and shrubs, it soon acquired the name Paradise, which lost
some significance when Pope Donus I (676-8) scrapped all vegetation and
laid down paving instead. In the middle of the garth, where today are
the steps in front of the present church, arose two fountains for the
ablution of those passers-by privileged to enter the basilica. The one
nearer to the entrance, known as the 'cantharus', which is Latin for a
large holy water vessel, was according to the Liber Pontificalis finished
and decorated by Pope Symmachus - 'beautified with marble work and with
lambs and crosses and palms in mosaic'. This fifth-century pope did more
than any other to finish the works begun by Constantine. Owing to an antipope
being entrenched in the Lateran for much of his reign he wa obliged to
live at the Vatican on which he therefore concentrated improvements. Symmachus's
cantharus took the form of a square tabernacle with dome of gilt bronze,
supported by eight columns of red porphyry. The cornice was adorned with
four bronze dolphis to spout rain water from the roof, and four peacocks,
symbols of eternity. Behing classical plutei, or solid marble panels carved
with griffins holding candelabra in their paws, rose the giant pinecone
of bronze. All the bronze ornaments, except the peacocks and the pinecone,
were melted down by Paul V in 1614. These last now embellish the great
niche of the Belvedere Court of the Vatican Palace. The pinecone on which
the name of its bronze founder is incised was, according to the Liber
Pontificalis, taken by Pope Symmachus from the summit of Hadrian's Mausoleum
but, according to an English traveler to Rome in 1344-5, carried from
the pagan monument by the devil on the night in which the Virgin Mary
bore Christ into the world. The mosaics with which Pope Symmachus covered
the west walls of the quadriporticus were removed in the late thirteenth
century. Instead, the space was painted with ten frescoes of scenes in
the lives of Saints Peter and Paul, including the Quo Vadis and the Fall
of Simon Magus. They in turn were all destroyed by Paul V to make way
for the present nave and façade. Fragments of copies taken before their
destruction survive. One fresco of Constantine's Dream includes the head
and shoulders of Peter and Paul. Against a green ground, Peter under a
yellow halo is given the traditional white hair and beard and wears a
dark red mantle.

In this delectable court,
sheltered on all sides, fragrant with the scent of blossom and aromatic
herb, and enlivened by the dripping of water into the central cantharus
and the splashing of a plume of spray into the second fountain, devout
pilgrims and curious sightseers would mingle with the wretched penitents
before passing into the church. Until the sixth century, an odd custom
was observed in the atrium in front of the basilica. Rich senators and
members of the upper classes would hold banquets in the open air, at which
they patronized the poor. They dispensed charity of all kinds, clothing,
food and drink. It was a sort of prolongation of the very early Christian
habit of commemorating the dead by pouring libations down a pipe into
the coffins. The atrium banquets soon led to the wildest excesses. The
fashionable reveled; the hoi poloi got drunk. Eventually, the clergy put
a stop to this time-honoured procedure as incompatible with the reverence
expected with the sacred precincts.

Above the atrium's west colonnade,
which formed the portico to the church, loomed two stages of the façade.
This was a straightforward affair much modified by Gregory IX (1227-41).
He opened two rows of three great round-headed windows, each of three
pointed lights. Over them in the tympanum he put a rose window ike the
all-seeing eye of God. The façade as altered by Gregory is partly shown
in the Fire of the Borgo fresco in the Raphael Stanze. Gregory also inserted
mosaics to take the place of Leo the Great's Twenty-four Elders offering
Gifts to Christ between pairs of Evangelists. The substitute mosaics were
of Our Lord enthroned with Peter and Paul on either side - clearly visible
over the portico in renaissance drawings - and on his let Pope Gregory
IX suppliant on his knees. From the portico, under the floor of which
more than forty medieval popes were buried (the three other colonnades
were reserved for the coffins of emperors and kings), five doorways, silvered
by Honorius I, opened into the basilica, the central three to the nave,
the end ones to the aisles. The middle nave door was called 'Porta Mediana',
'Regia', or 'Argentea', because of the solid silver plates which, until
they were plundered, enriched it. The first on the right, 'Porta Romana',
for the use of Romans only. The second on the right, 'Porta Guidonea',
because of the guides who conducted the tourists through it. The first
on the left, 'Porta Ravenniana', for the use of those living in Trastevere,
the west bank of the Tiber; and the second on the left, 'Porta del Giudizio'
for the dead - an ominous reminder that enjoyment of the next world would
be measured by the relative degree of man's sins in the present.

The unknown English pilgrim
of 1344-5 was filled with suitable awe by the time he had crossed the
atrium. 'And then,' he said, 'lie open the doors ['sumptuously constructed']
to the church, which is the largest of all churches in the world.' He
went on to emphasize its alarming grandeur by remarking that, 'If one
loses his companion in that church, he may seek for a whole day, because
of its size and because of the multitudes who run from place to place,
venerating shrines with kisses and prayers, since there is no altar at
which indulgence is not granted.' By contrast, a stranger visiting St
Peter's at the time of Pope Sylvester's dedication would not have been
the least confused. There was then no likelihood of losing himself. The
plan of the building as Constantine left it was very straightforward indeed.
It was a perfect rectangle with only an apse at one end to break the uniformity.
As the centuries advanced, the basilica became more and more cluttered
with chapels, monuments and treasure of all sorts. Until the sixth century
there were no side chapels at all. Thereafter, they cropped up literally
by dozens, clinging like barnacles to the hull of a submerged man-of-war.
At one time, there were over ninety projecting from the aisles or propped
haphazard against open wall spaces, the piers, and columns of the nave.
When there ceased to be room in the portico in which to bury popes, their
corpses were deposited under the floor of the church and monuments raised
as close to the remains as the restricted space allowed. Most of these
monuments were destroyed with the old basilica. Some were re-erected in
the crypt of te new building. Where altars and tombs had not been jammed
together, those precious fabrics for which St Peter's was renowned were
spread or hung. Rare oriental cloths of purple Tyrian dyes, the gifts
of eastern potentates or the spoils of pious crusaders, Turkish and Persian
tissues, and English embroideries in gold and silver thread on a ruby
red background, dazzled the eye. Glass witchballs, silvered, gilded, or
stained a sapphire blue, tinkled against ivory ostrich eggs, symbols of
the world's mystery and the source of life, which were threaded on wire
attached to changeliers. And always the dark interior was brightened by
the innumerable lamps kept burning before the shrines, and the thirteen
hundred and seventy was candles of Adrian I's great pharos in the shape
of crowns and crosses suspended from a central beam on a glittering silver
chain.

The size of the building was
certainly impressive. The interior was divided by four rows of twenty-two
Corinthian columns in each, so as to form a nave and four aisles. The
height of the inner rows of columns, which were raised above the nave
on five steps, was from base to architrave nearly thirty feet. Since these
columns had been taken from various pagan temples, their size and shape
were not exactly uniform. They carried a straight, projecting entablature
(on which one could walk, protected by a rail), broken in the middle of
the church by two huge arches rising to the roof plate. The first two
columns at the entrance to the nave, being of rare black African marble,
were eventually spared and re-erected on either side of the central door
of the renaissance church. The space immediately over the nave entablature
had been decorated by Pope Liberius (352-66) with conjectural medallion
portraits of all the popes since Peter. Above them were three tiers of
compartments painted, the upper between the windows with patriarchs, prophets
and apostles, and the two lower with forty-six scenes from the Old and
New Testaments. They were restored for Popes Gregory IV and Formosus (891-6),
and again by Giotto. The four aisles were separated by further rows of
columns, nineteen to twenty feet high, forming arcades. In all, precisely
one hundred columns made the interior into a closely packed forest - but
for a wide central clearing - seemingly of great depth and distance. I
have said that the roof, like those of all Constantine's churches, was
of open timber. One very like it to survive, although subsequently renewed,
is that of the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem. Since the Romans had
long ago perfected a form of brick arched vaulting, Constantine's comparatively
primitive and economic method can only be explained by his desperate hurry
in building so many basilicas. Here rafters laid from one wall plate to
another, and clamped in the middle with iron stays, were painted in bright
mosaic-like patterns. The floor of the nave was paved in squares and rectangles
in two coloured marbles.

The sanctuary and apse were
framed through a high arch supported at the end of the nave by two great
detached columns of the Ionic order in granite. This very distinctive
arrangement, shared only by St Paul's outside the Walls, allowed an uninterrupted
view from one end of the church to the other. Over the triumphal arch,
Constantine had inscribed in mosaic, in gratitude for the undeniable mercies
bestowed upon him, these words:

('Because under your leadership
the triumphant universe has reached to the furthest stars victorious Constantine
dedicates this church to you.')

Surely they are the final
acknowledgment of the supreme Christian God by this level-headed ruler
who was also an indefatigable seeker after religious truth.

The head of the apse too was
long renowned for its beautiful mosaics. Leo the Great (440-61) first
decorated it in this medium. But the mosaic which remained until the apse
was finally destroyed only dated from the reign of the Conti Pope Innocent
III (1198-1216). A fragment was removed to the chapel in the Conti Palace
at Poli, and a painting of the whole was hung in the crypt of St Peter's.
Christ sits enthroned between St Paul on his right hand and St Peter on
his left, both standing. Behind each apostle a palm tree. There are figures
of men in small and animals grouped round a fountain gushing at Our Lord's
feet. Below, the Lamb of God, Pope Innocent III and a female figure, representing
the Church.

And of course there stood
conspicuously in the middle of the sanctuary the nucleus and very reason
of Constantine's basilica, namely the shrine over St Peter's tomb. This
most sacred object by no means escaped alteration throughout the centuries.
I have already described how Gregory the Great raised the presbytery floor,
built a new canopy over the shrine which he enriched with rare marbles,
and formed the first sunk confession. The next pope to make notable changes
was Gregory III (731-41). He duplicated the six vine-wreathed, twisted
columns by six more, a present from the Exarch of Ravenna, which he placed
in front of the others. In this formation the twelve columns stood throughout
the Middle Ages, objects of wonder and admiration to pilgrims and artists
alike. Their introduction into various fields of art during many different
stylistic periods is proof of their extraordinary popular appeal. They
gave rise to the Easter candlesticks of marble and mosaic fashioned by
the Cosmati family in Romanesque days. They appeared in Jean Fouquet's
illuminations of Pompey and of King Herod entering the Holy of Holies
in 'Les Antiquites Judaiques', as a consequence of the artist's visit
to Rome in 1443. Raphael introduced them into his cartoon, 'The Healing
of the Lame Man', which was reproduced in Flemish and Mortlake tapestries.
Rubens and Rembrandt put them in the background of their pictures. Spain
copied them upon countless gilded reredoses and tombs. England upon the
Jacobean porch of St Mary's church at Oxford, and a Charles II fireplace
in Ham House. In most European countries baroque architects of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries seemed never to weary of reinterpreting a theme
first invented by some unknown Greek carver of the third century after
Christ.

Gregory III did not stop at
duplicating the barley sugar columns. In defiant protest against the Iconoclasm
raging in the East, he erected two magnificent monuments on either side
of the Apostle's tomb. He also built a new canopy over the tomb itself.
It had columns of onyx surmounted by a silver encrusted architrave, upon
which were engraved images of the Saviour with the Twelve Disciples and
the Mother of God accompanied by the Holy Virgins - the very kind of things
which the Byzantine emperors were ruthlessly destroying. Close to the
shrine Gregory built a chapel to contain various holy relics of such sort
as were being dispersed in Constantinople. Did he by any chance also set
up at the north-west corner of the crossing the seated figure of St Peter
and institute the tradition of kissing that bronze toe? If so, Pope Gregory
III could not have lit upon a scheme better calculated to confound the
Iconoclasts of the eighth century and those of every subsequent century
down to our own.

The experts have not yet reached
agreement upon the date of the famous bronze statue. A long honoured tradition,
almost certainly without foundation, claimed that St Leo the Great had
it converted from an ancient statue of the Capitoline Jupiter. Until recent
times it was believed to date from the firth or sixth century. Antonio
Nunoz and other scholars observing the seemingly Gothic rigidity of the
draperies, attributed the figure not to pagan derivation, but to a Christian
origin of the thirteenth century. It was in all probability, they asserted,
the work of Arnolfo di Cambio. Arnolfo may have been inspired by the statue
of St Peter, once outside the old basilica and now in the crypt, which
was undoubtedly transformed from that of an ancient philosopher by a change
of head and the addition of the sacred keys. Schuller-Piroli on the other
hand claims that the bronze of the seated figure is composed of the same
alloy of lead and silver as that found in coinage of the second half of
the seventh century; that the warm brown-gold patina is only shared by
bronze of the late medieval centuries. He does not exclude the remote
possibility that Arnolfo di Cambio may have recast an ancient statue,
substituted a new head, and provided keys.

At all events this deeply
venerated image survived the destruction of Constantine's basilica and
was given a place of honour in the new one. The present marble throne
dates from renaissance times, and the plinth of Sicilian jasper inlaid
with green porphyry panels was carved by Carlo Marchionni in 1756-7. It
does not greatly matter precisely when the figure was made. There is about
it a primitive dignity and sublimity which has awed generations of the
faithful, who day by day congregate to salute the worn toe and rub their
foreheads against the foot. Its symbolical beauty is not enhanced by the
pontifical mitre and bejeweled raiments with which it is incongruously
decked on high festivals. Vain are the most exhaustive efforts of men,
even of popes, to raise perennial monuments, however splendid as art,
however rich in substance. Callixtus II (1119-24) reconstructed the Gregorian
altar, using the same white marble so carefully selected by Pope Sylvester
and the Emperor Constantine and willfully discarded by the first Gregory.
On the Feast of Our Lady, he laid the new altar stone, granting an indulgence
of three years to those who might worship at it. His was probably the
Gothic octagonal ciborium with finials clustering round a dunce-cap cupola,
depicted on several late drawings and sketches of the interior. It too
was to disappear in the Renaissance.

Even during the latter half
of the fifteenth century, after pontifical schemes for the total demolition
of Constantine's basilica had been ventilated, additions as well as restorations
were still being made to the building. Lack of any concerted policy was
due to a series of financial crises in the papal treasury, international
distractions and the too quick succession of popes. Instead, muddle and
makeshift in regard to the fabric's future ensued. In 1463 Pius II began
reconstructing the tribune, or loggia of the papal benediction on the
east front of the atrium and to the north of the entrance, which Innocent
VIII (1484-92) completed in the renaissance style. Both popes must have
known that when a comprehensive scheme of rebuilding was finally put in
hand it would be swept away. It was demolished by Paul V after a hundred
years' existence. Pius II likewise began the conversion, which Innocent
completed, of Pope Symmachus's circular church of St Andrew to a sacristy.
This fifth-century circular appendage, on the south side of the old basilica,
joined to its fellow, the similar round church of St Petronilla (for a
long time treated as an imperial mausoleum and sheltering the remains
of the Apostle's daughter brought from the catacombs) made in old drawings
and woodcuts a strange and picturesque group with Caligula's obelisk.
When the transept was added the group fromed a very uncomfortable tangent
to the basilica, like a fractured limb. St Petronilla's church became
a chapel under the patronage of the kings of France and in 1500 sheltered
Michelangelo's Pieta. Minute detached churches, or sepulchral chapels,
dedicated to St Martin, St John and St Paul, the deacons Sergius and Bacchus,
and the senatorial family of Probus, were grouped about the west end of
the basilica like satellite moons revolving round the planet Jupiter.

The
Sacks of Rome

The picture of St Peter's
throughout the Dark Ages must be seen against the sacks to which Rome
was repeatedly subject. The process of disintegration of the Western Empire
began under the absentee Emperor Honorius, who had fled to Ravenna on
ht first rumour that Italy might be invaded by the Goths. Here, entrenched
between almost impenetrable marshes and the Adriatic Sea, he set up his
capital. Honorius's terror of the Goths was only equaled by his ingratitude
and folly. He put to death on the specious accusation of treachery his
ward and protector, Stilicho, who had twice defeated Alaric, the King
of the Goths, and thus deprived himself of the one general capable of
defending him. He then refused to treat with Alaric, who begged him to
do so in order that the city of Rome might be spared the fury of his troops.
To the plea of this magnanimous enemy and the exhortations of the pope,
Honorius turned a deaf ear. As a result, Rome fell to Alaric in 410 and
suffered the first terrible sack at the hands of a barbarian invader.
Within three days the Goths plundered everything they could remove from
the city. Every church but two was entered and looted. The exceptions
were St Peter's and St Paul's which Alaric commanded his men to respect
and leave alone. The shrines of the two apostles were spared by the invaders
who, regarded by the effete Romans as wild savages, were yet Christians,
although Arians, in holy dread of disturbing places so sanctified by tradition.
During the three day loot, a Gothic soldier came upon a girl in charge
of a pile of treasure. He was about to fall upon it when the defenceless
guardian remarked that he would do so at his peril. The things belonged,
she said, to St Peter who would undoubtedly wreak his vengeance on the
looter. The terror-striken soldier not only refrained from plundering,
but escorted the girl and the treasure to the basilica where it belonged.
On the journey, other soldiers turned from their booty and reverently
joined the strange procession headed by the Roman girl and her Gothic
accomplice, helping them to carry to safe custody chalices, crucifixes
and lamps of gold and silver, encrusted with emeralds and amethysts.

The news of the sack of Rome
by Alaric spread swiftly overseas, causing consternation and horror that
the greatest and richest city of the civilized world, anciently the capital
of the impregnable empire, and now the set of the Christian religion,
had succumbed so absolutely to a horde of barbarians. The lamentations
of contemporary writers are still pitiable to read. St Jerome in his distant
solitude at Bethlehem felt himself smitten to the earth. Never, he thought,
would civilization raise its head again. He could not eat, nor think,
nor act like a person of sound mind, so appalled was he by the first accounts
of the Roman fugitibes who had lived through the sack and now were reaching
Palestine in dire distress. Other wretched victims, deprived of all their
possessions, fled to Africa where St Augustine learned the dreadful story
in Hippo. The catastrophe inspired his great treatise, The City of God,
which was begun in answer to those pagans who claimed that the fall of
Rome was owing to the abolition of heather worship. On the contrary, Augustine
postulated that out of the ruins of the Roman Empire would arise a far
greater and more widespread hegemony of Christian rule.

Terrible as was the sack of
410, far worse sacks were to follow. Only moveable treasure had been carted
in quantities out of the city by Alaric's Goths. The monuments and statues
were unscathed. The citizens indeed were ruined temporarily, but the property
and wealth of the papacy were little affected. In fact, a very short time
was to elapse before St Jerome was reviling the sybaritism of the Roman
clergy who were over-dressed and over-scented, who strutted about on tiptoe
lest they dirtied their jeweled sandals, who wore rings on their fingers
and had their hair curled and set. It was not because of these mincing
popinjays nor of any display of lay leadership that Rome escaped the imminent
destruction by Attila, King of the Huns. The extraordinary authority and
courage of Pope Leo I, aided by an opportune vision to Attila of the threatening
saints Peter and Paul, persuaded the terrible 'Scourge of God' to withdraw
from the very gates of Rome. This miraculous delivery took place in 452.

Respite was not to endure
for long. Only three years later, in 455, there occurred the sack of Rome
by the Vandals under Genseric. These people, a migratory tribe originally
from Scandinavia, and now come from Africa, likewise refrained from shedding
blood - only the Emperor Maximus, while trying to escape, was slain by
one of his own bodyguard. But they too plundered, this time for fourteen
days, palaces, houses, public buildings, churches and temples, taking
away all they could lay their hands upon. The roof of the Temple of Peace
being made of gilded bronze was stripped, and the sacred Jewish spoils,
including the seven-branched candlestick captured by Titus in Jerusalem,
were shipped on board Vandal vessels in the Tiber. But again, the shrines
of the apostles were spared.

The decline of the Western
Empire in the fifth century is tragic and unedifying. In 472 the third
sack of Rome, this time under Ricimer, a Suebian prince, brought the city
finally to its knees. In 476 the last sovereign, Romulus Augustulus, abdicated
and the Roman Empire came to its inglorious end. Henceforward, Italy was
ruled by barbarian kings. Then in the sixth century came the turn of the
Gothic Kingdom to be destroyed. Between 535 and 553 Rome was occupied
and sacked, first by Totila, King of the Ostrogoths, and, secondly, by
the Eastern Emperor's general, Belisarius. Both these invaders offered
gifts and prayers at the Apostle's tomb, which their troops were commanded
to respect. The barbarian king, nevertheless, carried out his threat to
turn the city into a pasture for cows by entirely depopulating it, and
driving the miserable inhabitants into the Campagna. For forty days, not
a soul was to be seen in the empty streets, where abandoned dogs, cat
and cattle aimlessly wandered and foraged amongst the ordure, all that
was left by the departed invaders and refugees.

Compared with the Lombards,
Muslims, Magyars and Normans, who were the next invaders of Italian soil,
the Goths, Vandals, Huns and Suebians had been civilized and Romanized.
Alaric, Attila, Genseric, Ricimer and Totila, names that sent a shudder
down the spine of every Roman citizen of their times, were gentlemen in
relation to the savage leaders of the hordes which were now to pour into
the peninsula and inundate whatever region they passed through. Whereas
the earlier invaders had admired and wished to preserve the Latin civilization,
the later invaders were bent merely on its destruction. When the Lombards
descended upon the valley of the Po, swarms of heathen savages attended
them. Together they swept down Italy consuming and sacking, and leaving
behind them a trail of pestilence, famine and want. Although Arians, the
Lombards were the most rapacious of the invaders up to date, and throughout
their long domination were more consistently feared and loather by the
Romans and the Church than any of their barbarian predecessors. Only the
anarchy that prevailed in their ranks, and the persuasiveness and ransom
money of Pope Pelagius II in 578 once again warded off an impending sack
of Rome. The city was saved, but not by any intervention of the inhabitants,
who by now lived in conditions of absolute demoralization and were quite
incapable of making even a show of armed resistance.

The Lombards ruled Italy for
over two hundred years until finally conquered by Charlemagne at the papacy's
urgent instigation. Not until 756 did they besiege, without entering Rome.
Nonetheless, they carried off from the catacombs in cartloads the sacred
bodies of martyrs in order to enshrine them in the churches of their own
capital, Pavia. This desecration so roused Pope Stephen III that he adopted
a desperate method of eliciting support from the Franks. He sent a letter,
signed in the name of the Apostle Peter himself, to their King Pepin,
demanding in the most peremptory tones substantial aid, and threatening
the loss of eternal life in the next world, if it were not instantly forthcoming.
To Stephen's intense relief, the letter acted like a charm upon the devout
Franks. Military relief was supplied without delay, and again the city
escaped destruction.

Pepin's son, who was to bear
a name even greater than his, was like the father to become supreme papal
champion, first of Pope Adrian I against the Lombards and finally of Leo
III against his mutinous subjects. Three times in the course of his long
reign, he rushed to Adrian's rescue in Rome. He confirmed in the pope's
favour the donation of vast territories in central Italy granted by Pepin,
to which he continually added others. No wonder Charles looked upon himself
as the patron as well as the saviour of God's Vicar on earth. No wonder
too that he finally looked to the papacy for the supreme reward for more
than twenty-five years unremitting services. On Christmas Day of the year
800 one of the most solemn occasions in the history of St Peter's took
place. Charles went to the basilica with a large retinue to attend Mass.
He was on his knees meekly praying before the shrine of the Apostle. Certainly
to the surprise of the congregation, if not of the Frankish king, Leo
suddenly approached, and placing on his head a splendid crown, proclaimed
him Caesar Augustus. 'God grant life and victory to the great and pacific
Emperor!' he cried. Whereupon the priests, soldiers, nobles and common
people present took up the words so that the whole basilica echoed to
them. Then the pop actually bent the knee to the new emperor by way of
homage. By this means, a barbarian monarch was made successor of the Roman
caesars, and granted the rights and authority which were still nominally
claimed, if no longer exercised by the Byzantine emperors in the East.

The great circular porphyry
disc on which Charlemagne is said to have been kneeling at the moment
of his coronation escaped the destruction of old St Peter's. It was relaid
in the nave in front of the central door of the present basilica.

But in the terrible age the
luck of St Peter's church could not be expected to continue indefinitely.
Hitherto, her ancient prestige as the resting place of the first Christian
bishop had worked wonders on the admiration and superstition of barbarian
invaders. Soon, alas, depredators were to be at her gates who held her
in no awe whatsoever. On the contrary, the followers of Mohammed both
detested and despised all she stood for.

In short, the sack of Rome
by the Saracens in 846 transcended in intensity and horror of human carnage
any that had occurred previously. It was however different to all previous
sacks in that this time the walled city was spared, whereas the basilicas
of the two apostles and all the buildings that stood around them suffered
cruelly. The attack did not happen unexpectedly. The Governor of Tuscany
warned Pope Sergius II by letter of the approaching Saracen fleet. He
cautioned him to remove for safety inside the fortifications of the city
the bodies of the holy saints Peter and Paul, and the rich treasures that
adorned their shrines, 'ne de tanta salute tra [? salutare re] gens nefandissime
paganorum exultare potuisset', - to avoid the exultation by these most
accursed pagans over their possible capture. His words were not totally
unheeded. Father Engelbert Kirschbaum believes that at this time the heads
of the apostles were taken to the Lateran, where they have remained ever
since. There is no doubt that, inflamed with righteous detestation, the
Saracens raided the shrine of St Peter. They smashed to pieces the lower
part of the tropaion, or tabernacle, which had been erected in the second
century and was seen by the clerk Gaius; they destroyed the right side
of the heavy stone ledge which rested upon the marble columns, and forced
a way through the slab covering the grave below. The evidence of the recent
excavations is that the jubilant Muslims penetrated the grave, robbing
whatever treasure they found outside and in, and almost certainly desecrating
if not dispersing the Saint's remains. At last, the most sacred cynosure
of all Christendom was violated by an enemy bent on striking a devastating
blow at the very seat and centre of the Faith.

Finally, in 1084, the Normans,
who were in Rome by papal invitation to fight the partisans of an antipope,
pillaged, plundered and burnt the city. No previous raiders had wreaked
quite such widespread havoc to buildings, nor caused such lasting confusion
in papal government. Some English crusaders, happening to be in Rome a
year or so later, left an account of the civil strife still raging. 'When
we went into the Basilica of St Peter,' they related, 'we found before
the altar the men of Guidbert the antipope [Clement II] who with swords
in their hands wickedly seized the offerings laid on the altar. Others
ran back and forth on the [ceiling] beams of the church and threw stones
down upon us as we lay prostrate at our prayers. For when they saw any
adherent of Urban [the lawful pope] they tried to kill him on the spot.
We grieved not a little therefore in seeing such atrocity there.'

It is not a little surprising,
when we consider the vicissitudes of Rome throughout the Dark Ages, that
the shrine of St Peter survived so long the covetousness and savagery
of successive invaders, heathen and Christian alike, only to be rifled
in 846; nor surely that Constantine's basilica, battered, renovated and
altered though it was, outlasted thirteen hundred years of violence, before
finally being pulled down in order to make way for a more magnificent
substitute.

One inevitable consequence
of the repeated sacks of Rome which caused almost more distress to the
Christian population than any other was the disturbance, and at times
dispersal, of the relics of the saints and martyrs. Simple, devout persons
derive no harm, and often much comfort, from objects that once belonged
to those they loved and revered, or to those distant beings, now long
dead but years ago specially blessed. It is when they attach supernatural
powers to relics and when their veneration turns to worship that the sin
of idolatry rears its ugly head. The temptation is apt to arise when they
are desperate and life is dangerous and uncertain.

With the decline of Latin
literature and scholarship in the West and the recrudescence of barbarian
invasions there arose in an ill-educated and ignorant world a miasma of
superstition. The wildest apocryphal stories were current, strange martyrologies
were accepted, devils and sacerdotal powers were rife and relics were
in fervent demand, often credited with miraculous cures. In the first
and second centuries no interest had been shown in relics. The priest
Gaius, writing in the late second or early third century about the shrines
of Peter and Paul, merely referred to their triumphal memorials. But when
St Cyprian was beheaded in 258 his flock mopped up the young man's blood
with their own clothing which they preserved in his memory. Already a
mystic virtue was sensed in the physical remains of a specially holy man.
By the fourth century relics were acquiring a sacred meaning, and were
being venerated. Soon they were believed to be wonder-working. They began
to accumulate in astonishing numbers. Not only bones and sinews of saints
were collected, but objects associated with Our Lord were, after three
hundred years of obscurity, conveniently assembled - the reed on which
the sponge was offered to the crucified One, the sponge itself, the nails
of the cross, the thorns of the crown and the seamless robe (the last
of which is claimed by twenty different cathedrals). The holy blood and
hair, the manger, the napkin which bound the sacred head in the tomb,
and of course the cross, were discovered and apportioned among the treasure
of Christian churches. Even the holy prepuce was formerly venerated in
an obscure church in Latium, until a decree of 190 forbade further mention
of this detail. Relics of Our Lady were claimed; and her home was miraculously
transported from Syria to Italy by air. By the sixth century, godly people
overstepped the limits of honour in acquiring relics by methods only matched
by some stamp collectors of our own time. The richer and greater a person,
the more over-reaching his or her unscrupulousness. Owners of private
chapels in need of relics rifled tombs at night, purloined an arm or finger
from coffins and bargained with venal custodians of cemeteries for pieces
of cerecloth, which they took home and mounted in jeweled caskets. This
pious mania persisted even into counter-reformation times. A lady devotee,
in kissing the corpse of St Francis Xavier, is said to have bitten off
a great toe which she carried away in her mouth.